Me, Myself and Highlander
by Allons-ee Bah Gum
Summary: A/N: Alternative ending of the Season Four finale. The Doctor asks Rose and the other Doctor, Jack and Donna, and Martha and Mickey to all join on his travels. The TARDIS has crash landed on Earth and the Doctor is baffled. Everything seems normal but looks can be deceiving.
1. Crash

**CHAPTER ONE: CRASH**

"...and re-calibrate the defenses because the last thing we need is another Titanic incident." the Doctor rambled, flicking buttons and bouncing around the console.

Rose snapped out of her daydream, "Wait, what about the Titanic?" When the navy-blue-clad Time Lord didn't respond, his counterpart stepped forward scratching the back of his head, "Oh, the Titanic _may_ have crashed into the TARDIS."

"I think he makes half this stuff up," Mickey mumbled from beside Rose, his arms crossed and his feet firmly on the metal grating whilst hers dangled idly. He and Martha had, had an argument last night and he'd been sulking all day. Rose hadn't heard what it involved but they'd been shouting a lot.

"Well... it wasn't the real Titanic. It was a space one," he explained, gesticulating this way and that with both hands playing the roles of either vessel and clapping loudly when they collided, all the while donning that mad, toothy grin Rose loved so much. It was times like this she saw how similar he and the Doctor could be, and how she remembered not to compare them._ Two different people_, she told herself, _he's half-human!_ She supposed it helped that the younger double had begun to set himself apart from the Doctor physically. He no longer wore suits everyday, instead opting for the casual jeans and t-shirt. At first he looked naked and awkward, like he was trying too hard to be human, but after a fashion he settled into mortal life. Moreover, not a month after the Doctor had offered Rose and his clone the option to travel on-board, had he stopped gelling his hair. Flopping over the top of his forehead, she found she actually preferred it natural.

"I hated that bloody film." Donna added after the silence had become deafening. Even the soles of the Doctor's converse had relented their insistent banging. Rose shot her a quizzical look, _OH! The Titanic!_

"Want me to draw you like one of my French girls?" Jack winked, as he rounded the coral strut, hair still damp from his shower.

"From the amount of product I can smell on you, you'd think you were one of the French girls." she quipped. Both Mickey and Rose chuckled as the-Doctor-in-blue hummed lightly with a smile in Donna's direction; it was halfway between a laugh and a sigh. Rose had never seen the Doctor so happy than in the past four months, and she had never seen him look as worse than in the first week of their journeying. Donna's human mind couldn't sustain the knowledge of nine-hundred years of life and an IQ of four digits, so in three days her condition had deteriorated until he'd been forced to induce a coma. Both Doctors agreed they'd have to remove the alien consciousness thus killing the DoctorDonna. But it was either that or she died. And so the Doctor had spent the following ninety-six hours at her bedside waiting for her to wake. He didn't eat or sleep and although she'd been informed Gallifreyans could survive for over forty days without food or drink, she couldn't help but worry. He hung his head as if the weight of all the agony and self-loathing made it so. When she finally did rouse, her memory from the moment she and the TARDIS were burning at the heart of the Dalek Crucible had been wiped and she was suffice to say "back to normal".

Jack couldn't hide the grin that spread across his face, "There's nothing wrong with a man taking care of himself," he punctuated the retort by dragging his left hand through his dark locks and admiring himself in the reflection of the TARDIS monitor. The Doctor side-stepped away to avoid the Captain's infectious vanity.

"Oh come on, we can all have a good mirror-mirror moment later!" he bursted, skipping toward the double doors, "Right now we've landed on Julio Ay, one of the few planets in the Barstos Galaxy. Made_ entirely_ of water! The fantastic thing about this place is that it's so far away from the sun that it's eternally frozen. Literally frozen!" He turned to face the group but continued backing away, "The sun's light reflects off the surface and from far away worlds you can see patterns of swirling water vapour and other gases so it looks like a shining marble in the sky."

Donna nudged Mickey on the shoulder, "That's Time Lord for 'bring your thermals'." She strutted off behind the centre column in search of her hooded jacket.

The Doctor ignored her and babbled on about the moon made of glass. Rose beamed up at her Doctor, he replied by grasping her hand the way he had done all those years ago.

"Wait," the Doctor cocked his head up and inhaled deeply, flaring his nostrils, "we're missing one."

"Donna just went to get her coat," said Jack.

"No, not her." he squinted. "MARTHA!"

"Oh. She's..." Mickey hesitated, "sleeping."

"What? She'll miss the ice planet of the nineteenth kingdom!" he pouted.

Jack started, "Doc, I think she just wants to be left alone."

"Oh all right." As he pirouetted to face the doors, Rose swore she heard him mutter "humans" under his breath.

The Time Lord was just reaching for the handle when the whole ship shuddered and wheezed. It wasn't like the dematerialization sequence, Rose noted. It was more. She heard it in every pocket of her mind, calling out for help. Unspoken words reverberating throughout her entire being. The TARDIS was lost. She was crying out for help.

Then darkness cast over them.


	2. Card-iff You Can't Say Something Nice

**CHAPTER TWO : CARD-IFF YOU CAN'T SAY SOMETHING NICE**

"Doctor?!" someone shouted.

"WHAT DID YOU DO!?" Donna boomed from the other side of the room.

"Nothing."

"Doctor!" Rose called.

"Hold on!"

"Is it a power cut?" another tried. Feet trotted against metal as the Doctor ran back up to the controls. The other Doctor remained beside Rose and gripped her hand tighter.

"Can't be! Wait, wait! I think..." the monitor flickered and he paused, rattling something along the floor, maneuvering his way in the dark somehow. "If I can just... get navigations back online, we can figure out where we are. Come on!" he slapped the side of the screen and the picture flickered again, giving Rose precious few seconds to see his frustrated expression. But there was something in those old eyes. Something she seldom saw. Fear.

"Wait, what? Did we just move?" echoed a voice drenched with an American intonation.

"Think so."

"I felt it, Doctor" Rose' breath hitched, "Something jus'... the TARDIS jus' spoke to me, like it was lost."

"Ah-hah!"

Another slam on the side of the monitor introduced a single source of light which everyone huddled toward. As her eyes adjusted, she tracked the movement of the circles around the screen, some growing larger and merging with others and a few twirling and dancing. She hadn't noticed when the Doctor slipped on his glasses but as he leant forward she saw the black rims poking behind his ears. "Oh." He sounded disgruntled.

"What is it?" Jack shot, beating everyone else to the punchline.

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong."

"You needn't sound so disappointed!" Donna yelled.

"Go on!" smiled Rose "where are we?"

After a long bout of noiselessness he answered her, "Earth. Wales. Cardiff to be exact."

"What the hell is going on?!" Martha came storming through the doorway, "I was trying to read and then you lot go about playing silly buggers turning the lights off!"

The Doctor gulped sheepishly, "It was the TARDIS. We- erm- well I don't know really. We moved. She's an old ship, temperamental." He tapped the console, "But we've landed now, might as well check it out."

Before she could so much as utter another syllable, the Doctor tumbled out the doors and everyone else followed to meet a city centre. He lapped at the thick air, "Tuesday the 25th of January, 2008. Ten-oh-five in the morning."

"That was on the monitor wasn't it?" Rose nudged the other Doctor. He just smiled back, his tongue peeking through the gap of his teeth.

"Mind you, it's not very busy."

Donna scolded "Well why'd she bring us 'ere?! How boring is that!"

"S'not boring at all!" he gestured toward a man on a bicycle, "See! A bike! That's cool. Very interesting. Excellent mode of transport." He rocked back on his heels. "Yep," he mumbled, popping his 'p'.

"But Wales? Really?!" Martha wrinkled her nose.

He twisted on his toes, "Well if you're gonna moan about it, we'll leave."

"Finally!" praised Donna.

"...Just after I've run some diagnostics on Sexy. Should take about -oh - an hour?"

Jack raised his eyebrows, a smile ghosting his face, "Diagnostics on what was that?"

The Doctor shifted his gaze to a point far behind the Captain's head, "On- sorry? D-d-did I- erm what?" Jack opened his mouth again to speak but was quickly shot down. "I can't account for everything, Jack." he muttered, head firmly facing the floor as he strode back inside his ship. Jack snickered.

"Well whadda we do now?" Mickey shuffled.

The Doctor-in-pinstripe-brown clapped his hands, "Explore!" His eyes were met with unmeasurable animosity.

"Explore," Martha rolled the word on her tongue like a bitter honeycomb, "In Wales."

"Oh for God's sake," Mickey snapped. "Will you just calm down?"

_If looks could kill._ "Me? ME CALM DOWN?!" Martha set off down the busy highstreet, "I CANNOT be in the vicinity of HIM for another minute let alone an hour!"

"Do you realise how childish you are?!" Mickey called as he stormed away in the opposite direction.

The Doctor stepped back, "MARTHA? Mickey! Come back!" He ran his fingers through his hair, "Why does no one _ever_ listen to me?"

"I'll go," the Captain offered and sprinted after the scorned woman.

Rose jumped in front of the Doctor and pulled him into a tight hug, "Be right back. You know Mickey, he'll get himself run over if somebody's not there with him," she smiled and started after the fast-disappearing man. The Doctor sighed.

"Guess it's just you and me, spaceman."

* * *

"...and what are you doing here?" the Doctor sat back on his haunches eyeing the Sontaran electrofuel adapter that balanced on his fingertips. It had a curved metal base much like an egg but the flat face that greeted the Doctor had three blue, cylindrical prongs which converged at the middle. It was heavy he'd learnt after he dropped it on his foot the first time. But what it was doing lodged under the microwave in the Switch room, the Doctor did not know. "Oh well," he threw it over his shoulder and continued searching. What he was looking for, he had no idea. He sighed, rubbing his eye with his forefinger avoiding the gas mask around his face. Environmental systems were inactive, so there was no air supply. Communications were down. The ship had no defenses. And whenever he did get one system back online again, he lost another. Getting navigations operational had cost him the life support. He was thankful at least the TARDIS had provided them with a few minutes of the oxygen reserves or else Martha would've had another reason to complain. Well she wouldn't have complained for long, he reasoned. And it was freezing.

"Rassilon, I've acclimatised haven't I?" He patted the central column, thinking of days he could withstand the winters of Pastath without so much as a sweater. "What's wrong?" he whispered, but he heard no reply. She was gone. He stood up straight and headed for the doors.

When his eyes met with his doppelganger and Donna facing the phone box looking rather bewildered, he internally sighed once more.

"We've crashed for no discernible reason in the middle of a city centre, so we should probably stick together and think things through logically. OH NO! Wait, I've got a better plan! Let's all wander off and-" the Doctor frowned. They were staring, "What? What is it? Have I got something on my face?"

His duplicate twitched his eyebrows up in a gesticulative manner to a spot above his head. The Doctor turned and suddenly their expressions made a lot more sense.

"...What?!"


	3. Ghost Town

**A/N: First of all, really sorry for the late chapter, for some reason there were problems with my account so I had to get that sorted and then my laptop died. ****I cannot tell you how stressful the last week has been! D: **

**Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the feedback guys and I hope you like the rest of the story! I'm hoping to get updates into a regular schedule ****but seen as I can barely organise a pair of socks we'll just play things by ear :)**

* * *

**CHAPTER THREE: GHOST TOWN**

Jack dashed after Martha, marveling at her speed. Leaping over a wall of fence barriers with all the grace and strength of a man in his twenties, he spent a few moments congratulating himself on keeping in shape. He'd told Ianto getting an exercise bike for the office was a good idea. Torchwood. He hadn't even thought, they'd be here, his team. What was left of it. They knew where he was, more or less. Should he drop by, see how things are going? No. That only meant more goodbyes. Now he was closing in on her. She stopped at the end of the pavement, gripping the wall for support and sat heavily on the stone floor.

Not seconds later, he was beside her catching his breath, "Man, UNIT must work you guys pretty hard."

She exhaled loudly and pointed lazily back in the direction of the TARDIS, "Travelling with him for a year helped," she glanced away, "Well two." The Captain didn't meet her eyes. She hadn't spoken to him about The Year That Never Was before. He'd kept it that way. He'd lived long enough to know that some things are best left alone. Besides what would he even say to her,_ Hey, thanks for saving our lives and sorry your family were imprisoned and tortured. _

"I'll say it again; Torchwood's doors are always open for you if you get bored of wearing those berets." She just smiled at him. "So. You and Mickey Mouse. Come on, spill-the-beans as you twenty-first centurers would say."

"We had an argument."

"Hey I'm no detective,"_ I'm never doing that again_, "But I thought that was obvious."

"It's just- it doesn't even matter. We're arguing over an impossibility!"

Jack placed a hand over the back of hers, "Sharing is caring."

She stifled a giggle, wiping newly-sprung tears away with her free hand. "He's- he's always wanted them. But we're travelling now!" she burst. "God he really can time things well, can't he?"

"Always wanted what?"

She took a deep breath. "Kids." The word lingered in the space between them.

"So.. are you-?" his eyes met their destination at her abdomen.

"Oh! Oh no, God no!" she jumped. "I mean... that's the problem."

Jack blinked.

"Travelling with the Doctor, going to all those places. I suppose with all the running for your life and fighting aliens and saving worlds, I never stopped to think about any possible long-term effects. Who knows, it could have been Lazarus' machine, or the radiation on Messaline..." She looked up at Jack, "I can't have kids. I'm infertile."

"Oh," he breathed.

"That's why we're here, travelling again. I can't tell him that, it would destroy him. And when you're with the Doctor, the real world fades away and you can just pick up where you left off, whenever. So I'm just..."

"Buying time." Jack understood. She was becoming more and more like the Doctor, running away from her problems instead of facing them.

"And then he had the audacity to say I never open up!"

"Martha..."

"Well how can I when it would just collapse his world!?" They remained silent for a few minutes, neither knowing what to say until Jack broke the spell.

"You'll have to tell him eventually."

"I know," she replied calmly as she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She could sit like this forever. Martha needed forever right now.

"Come on," he stood abruptly. "They might be finished at the TARDIS. Well, come on, Captain's orders!"

Heaving her weary frame off the cold ground, she took his hand and they started walking back. A shiver ran down her spine. They were missing something and Martha knew it. She stopped in her tracks, losing Jack's grip.

"Jack..." she called. He continued on. "Jack!"

"What?"

"The Doctor said this was Cardiff city, right?"

He turned to face her, "Yeah, why?"

"If this is Cardiff..." she spun around, searching in all directions. Jack raised his head and his eyes widened.

"...then where is everybody?" Jack finished. It was desolate.

"We need to get back to the TARDIS."

* * *

Martha's legs ached and her lungs burnt. Maybe they were overreacting. Or maybe a deadly virus had swept the city since they'd been gone. _No_, she argued, _don't be stupid, there was a bloke earlier on a bike!_ Then what the hell was going! Jack came to a halt and leant against a barrier which blocked the road.

"Maybe it's just really quiet!" she called, as it was her turn to she catch up.

"No," he murmured. "It's not just quiet, it's silent. Listen! Nothing." Martha rounded Jack and looked over the luminescent orange fence which came to his waist. "Could be an evacuation? Makes you think what they'd be running from. Could be..."

"A filming location." Martha said. Jack joined her in front of the fence and immediately noted the sign: 'Filming Location Section C. For the attention of the general public, please remain quiet and respectful during filming, thank you for your co operation.' Martha didn't recognise the logo underneath, but she instantly remembered it being embroidered on the back of the cyclist's jacket.

Jack frowned, "Must be a big movie to shut down this much of the city."

"Yeah," she muttered. "Come on."

* * *

Panting and almost falling over themselves, Jack and Martha saw a blue beacon in their sights and three figures.

She slowed to a halt upon arrival, "Listen, I'm really sorry about flipping out, I'm just a bit stressed right now. Nothing I can't deal with though." She smiled at the Doctor's blank face, "But we did find out what's going on around here; it's a filming location for the BWC." _Whatever that is._

"No idea how far we went but it was all cordoned off," Jack helped. "Honestly, what production has enough money to shut down half of Cardiff?"

"Mine apparently."

Jack raised his eyebrows, more in confusion than surprise, "What?"

The Doctor simply gestured in the direction Donna and the other Doctor were angled. There was a small park area with benches and a few tables, and beyond that was a main road, but beyond that stood a proud high-rise. A large billboard spanned across the building wall. And on the billboard stood the Doctor, sonic in hand and leaning against the TARDIS.


End file.
